Chapter 29

“What?”

There was no response.

“Seriously, what? Do I have lint on my face or something?”

Still nothing.

“So you’re just going to stare at me all the way through lunch? People will gossip.”

She finally broke her silence. “Let them. I’m more worried about you.”

“This really isn’t the time to...”

“Trouble in someone else’s paradise?”

Luke sighed. She sees through me so easily. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You will, though.”

“I know,” he said, defeated.

“Good boy,” she whispered, condescendingly patting his thigh.

“We’re still imbibing later, right?”

“In the sense that you’re going to sit at my bar and drown your sorrows for free while I work my tight little ass off, just like you always do, I suppose.”

“Well there’s something to look forward to.”

“The drinking, the sorrows, or my ass?”

“Two out of the three.”

“Breeder perv.”

“I love you too, Wendy.”

Strictly speaking, Wendy’s position in the city’s wine hierarchy wasn’t important or elevated enough to secure an invitation to lunch and a vertical tasting with the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti’s Aubert de Villaine. Even were she able to acquire them, the wines would never appear at her bar, as they were too expensive for her clientele by many orders of magnitude. But Luke’s reputation merited such invitations, and every year he managed to secure a seat for her out of gratitude for endless free wine and devoted, if persistently abusive, companionship. They never spoke about it openly, but he knew that she was deeply appreciative of the gesture. For him it was about more than friendship; it was a way to keep himself grounded amidst rarified and occasionally snooty company, for only the swankiest restaurateurs and retailers were, as a rule, invited to such events. Also, Wendy has a better palate than most of the people in this room, he uncharitably mused, though that was something else he’d never say in her presence; direct compliments (at least from him) were rarely received without a witheringly sarcastic response.

The tasting itself was more reverent than studious — only the wealthiest of the wealthy could afford these bottles; not just because they were astoundingly expensive and produced in extremely limited quantities, but because they were mostly reserved for customers who purchased staggering amounts of other expensive and highly allocated wines — and the lunch was exceedingly formal, but for Luke it was a reminder of a real world that receded with every fantastical moment he spent at the lake.

This is who I am, or at least who I’m supposed to be. This is my job, events like this are a perk of my job, and no matter what happens in my personal life, this is what I’ll be coming back to. Or maybe fleeing to. He stole a glance at Wendy, surreptitiously admiring the formal elegance of her dress. You can’t see most of her piercings, and she’s only revealing the barest hint of ink. She looks incredibly beautiful all dolled up like this, but it’s not her. Not really. Having seen her in both this and the white dress she wore the night of our date, I’m persuaded that I like her better the other way. The thought made him wonder just how much he’d changed over the past two months, and whether or not it was for the better. Does Wendy see who I’ve become and wish I was the person I used to be? The person I was before I began an affair with someone else’s wife? Who’s the better person: Luke before Kathryn, Luke with Kathryn, or — if it comes to that — Luke after Kathryn? To this he had no satisfactory answer, only more questions.

At the moment, his best friend was deftly deflecting a ham-handed attempt at flirtation from the owner of one of the city’s stuffiest (and, in his opinion, most overrated) restaurants. The woman, who was much older than Wendy and dripping with expensive and unnecessarily flashy jewelry, was known by anyone who cared to know as a closeted lesbian in an utterly mystifying heterosexual marriage (her husband was neither wealthy, nor connected, nor well-liked, nor particularly handsome), and Wendy’s disdain for both her and her life choices had been the subject of one of the longest wine-soaked and expletive-filled rants to which she’d treated him in the early days of their friendship.

“But surely you agree that most things would be greatly improved were women allowed to be in charge,” she asked, in a painfully misguided appeal to their shared sisterhood. Luke knew Wendy more than well enough to guess what was going through her mind. “Allowed to!” I’m surprised I can’t hear her teeth grinding themselves to stumps.

“I certainly support women reaching out and taking what they want,” she responded. As she said it, her fingers snuck across his upper thigh and teasingly traced the outline of a shaft that immediately swelled inside his trousers. They lingered there for a moment before disappearing. “But even I have to admit that some men have their uses, limited though they might be.”

“Lucas, are you well? You’re quite flushed.” Though the older woman’s concern required an answer, Luke was dumbfounded, speechless, and unable to provide one more detailed than a brief nod. Plus, he could feel Wendy’s victorious smirk burning into his cheek.

“What was that about?” he demanded as he drove them to BTG. The lunch had run long, as industry wine lunches tended to do, and as a result Wendy had to go straight from lunch to work, which left him with insufficient time to drop his overnight bag (and the car) at his apartment. I’ll have to moderate my drinking, though if we’re really going to talk about my relationship with Kathryn, that’s probably a good thing.

“A simple demonstration of my fierce allyship with modern civilization’s most tragically victimized gender.” She patted him on the knee. “You shall overcome. Someday.”

Despite his unresolved shock at what she’d done, he couldn’t help but laugh. A few minutes of tricky navigation later, he tried again. “I didn’t mean the clever way you parried all those terribly awkward approaches, I mean...”

“She is awful at it, isn’t she?” Wendy interrupted. “It makes me wonder if the poor old bag has ever actually had a proper seeing-to from another woman. Well, one that she didn’t pay for.”

“Harsh, but probably accurate. Still, she’s not that unattractive. If she didn’t try so hard, she’d actually be reasonably handsome for a woman her age. But... ‘a proper seeing-to?’ Again with the Britishisms?”

“Just trying to speak your girl’s language.”

“Huh?”

“What do you mean, ‘huh?’ Lloyd Maddox is about three-thousand percent Welsh, dumbass.”

“I had no idea.”

“Of course you didn’t. If it wasn’t on your Master Sommelier exam, you don’t know anything about it. It’s a good thing they made you write your name on the cover, else we’d have to hang a lanyard around your neck with your name and home address written in crayon. Anyway, I suppose you’re being an enormous pussy about the fact that I touched your precious schlong.”

“The only words in that sentence that I agree with are ‘touched’ and ‘schlong,’ and I’m not so sure about the second one.”

“Awww. Did your wittle winky get all stiffy for wesbian Wendy?”

“I’m trying to drive here,” he managed through reflexive guffaws.

“There’s no point in lying, because I know it did. I felt it. You know what was nice? It was through your pants and I didn’t have to avoid all that disgusting hair.”

“You know, since our night together I’ve been...”

“Shush. It’s gross and I don’t want to think about it. Now, pay attention to the road or you’re going to put a dent in your lover’s car.”

“How do you know it’s hers?”

“You don’t own one, and you’ve already borrowed too many of Bill’s things.”

Luke stared straight ahead, unable to answer such a direct challenge. Especially because it’s true.

“I should probably slow down.”

“Oh, right. You have to drive. Yeah, you probably should. I’ll bring you some food.”

“Wait, not the...”

“Caponata toast, coming up!” she called as she disappeared into the kitchen. It was an old joke between the two of them; Luke had nothing against caponata, but when she was feeling mischievous — which was most of the time — Wendy simply refused to bring him whatever he ordered, instead replacing all his choices with plate after plate of caponata on toast.

Shaking his head in frustration, but delighted to be spending such relatively uncomplicated time with his friend, he nosed and inspected his glass. Beaujolais, clearly. Fleurie, probably? On the young side. That’s as far as I can go; there are way too many options these days.

“Didja get it yet?” she enquired, dropping a platter with well over a dozen toasted baguette slices slathered with caponata in front of him, and then standing there with an innocent smile.

“What a surprise! You know how much I love unexpected caponata,” he enthused, laying it on thick. “As for the wine ... young Fleurie, or maybe a hefty Chiroubles, but you can’t legitimately expect me to narrow it down beyond that.”

“I can and I do, boy wonder.”

He took another sip. “It’s not bretty or funky and it’s not particularly acidic, which eliminates a whole bunch of producers. It’s kinda like Coudert’s Clos de la Roilette — it’s not; it lacks the heft — but if I’m wrong and it is, then it’s from an unusually cool vintage. Anything beyond that would be pure guesswork, and you don’t need me to start naming every producer in the region.”

“It’s Métrat.”

“It’s not Métras. No way. The acidity isn’t burning a hole through my tongue.”

“Not Métras, Métrat. Ends with a T, not an S.”

He stared at her for a few seconds. “Did you actually just unearth a Beaujolais I’ve never even heard of, much less tasted?”

“It’s not my fault that you’re an out of touch fuddy-duddy when it comes to these things, or that you’ve been hiding between Kathryn’s legs for the better part of two months. Actually, it apparently just came back into the state after a long absence. Some sort of problem with the previous importer. Since I know you haven’t been keeping your fingers on the pulse of the wine world, because you’re keeping your fingers on the pulse of your redheaded sexbot, I thought I’d take advantage of your ignorance. Which is, I admit, easier to do than it used to be. Anyway, it’s their 2015 Fleurie. And by the way, you ridiculous nerd, you were right about one thing.”

“After that barrage of incoherence, I have no idea what you’re referring to.”

“It’s from the Roilette vineyard, or at least that’s what the rep told me.”

“Stay here. I’m going to take a victory lap around your bar. Maybe more than one.”

“Don’t get cocky. I know more ways to make you cry than I used to.”

“Will this be a hands-on demonstration? Are you going to fondle me again?”

“You wish. Speaking of which...” She was interrupted by her phone as it chirped an alert, and glanced at it to see what it was. At first she looked puzzled, then both eyebrows shot up as she scanned an incoming text. “Sorry, pal. I think I need to make a call in private. Do you mind holding down the fort while I’m outside?”

He’d done this for her on a number of occasions, and while the majority of Wendy’s wines and prices weren’t on any sort of printed list, making it impossible for him to know what to charge for them, he obviously had no problem performing all the usual duties involved with beverage service. By the time she finally returned, with an even odder look on her face than before, he’d accumulated a small stack of scribbled tickets and a few uncharged credit cards. Luke ran down which orders went with which customers and retook his seat, surprised that she she still hadn’t said a word. Instead, she was staring blankly at the register’s touchscreen, lost in a mysterious fog.

Something’s wrong. “Hot date?” He knew better than to probe too deeply or seriously; while Wendy was hardly secretive about her personal or sex lives, she preferred to dole out information on her own schedule.

“Huh?”

“Was that a lover you don’t want me to know about?”

She blinked more than once at his question. “A lover that I... ? No. Well, not exactly.” She left the confusing jumble of words sitting there as she continued to stare at the register.

“I’m not going to keep prying if you don’t want to talk about it, but is everything alright?”

“What? Yeah, it’s just...” Suddenly, she snapped out of her daze. “Sorry. It was something I didn’t plan on having to think about tonight.”

“But now you do?” She frowned at him for a while before answering in the affirmative. When no clarification seemed forthcoming, he waggled his eyebrows theatrically and offered her a goofy leer. “It is a hot date, isn’t it?”

She folded her arms and pursed her lips disapprovingly. “A friend is asking me for a very large favor. Several, in fact.”

“And they demanded an answer right away?”

“No, but I do have to make the decision tonight.”

“You’re not making anything clearer.”

“Considering the nature of the favor, that’s appropriate.” Turning away from him, she grabbed an empty glass. “Meanwhile, your ridiculously lucky guess about the Fleurie means that I really have to put the screws to you tonight.”

“Great, “ he muttered as she rummaged around in the fridge. Whatever that phone call was about, she clearly doesn’t want to tell me. With anyone else, I’d assume that means it’s about sex, but she’s never been shy about her sexual escapades. I guess it’ll remain a mystery.

True to her word, Wendy poured him glass after glass of wines deliberately chosen to stump even his encyclopedic knowledge and keen palate. In one sense it was a replay of his date with Kathryn, save that this time they ranged from delightfully weird to debatably drinkable. She repeatedly confessed how much she enjoyed torturing him in this way, but the truth was that he was having just as much fun. So much that, as the evening drew to a close and she began wiping down surfaces and stacking chairs on top of empty tables, he realized that he’d consumed quite a bit more alcohol than was acceptable for someone who still had to drive.

“It’s your fault, you know,” he observed while attempting to pitch in, as he usually did whenever he was still hanging around at last call. “Anyway, now I need a favor: can you drive me home? I’ll call you a taxi from there.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Wendy...”

“No. That’s not how tonight’s gonna work. Sit down and be quiet. Actually, try this while you wait.”

“But I shouldn’t...”

“Don’t worry about it. You’re not going to be driving.” She set a small, tulip-shaped glass of clear liquid in front of him, returning to her tasks as he dutifully swirled and sniffed.

“Grappa? No, eau de vie. I think it’s...” He sniffed again, then took a microscopic sip of the fiery liquid. “Mirabelle?”

“You are, as always, the cleverest of drunkards. Yes, it’s mirabelle eau de vie. Notice anything else?”

“It’s ... sweatier than usual.”

“Which means?”

“It’s sloppily distilled?”

“Could be,” she shrugged, turning off most of the lights with a single swipe of her hand. Her chef was long gone, and now it was quiet and dark. “But there’s a simpler explanation.”

“I’m think I’m too drunk to follow you, dear.”

“Don’t ‘dear’ me, you drunken Lothario. It’s old.”

“How old?”

“1957.”

“What the fuck, Wendy?” he sputtered. “How the hell did you put your hands on a 1957 mirabelle?”

“A relative brought it to me a few months ago. You know I’m one quarter French, right? Well, that quarter is split between Alsace and Lorraine, and one of my cousins dug this out of her grandfather’s basement after he died. This is pure French moonshine, pal. Now, enjoy the rest while I lock the back door. Then you’re coming with me.”

“But I have to park the car somewhere safe.”

“It’ll be safe at my place.”

“Okay, I suppose I can take a cab home from there and pick it up tomorrow, but it would be cheaper if...”

“You really have gotten dumber, haven’t you? I knew it wouldn’t take long for her to fuck your brains out, and that’s under the charitable assumption that she didn’t drain all your mental faculties before she even touched you. but she’s accomplished it in record time. You’re coming to my apartment tonight, you idiot.”

“I am? We’re going to keep drinking?”

She scowled at him, hands on hips as she exploded in exasperation. “Thanks! Thanks ever so much. You really know how to make a girl feel wanted. How in the hell do you get laid so often?”

“I don’t...”

Closing the distance between them, she rhythmically poked him in the chest as punctuation for every word. Each poke was hard enough to hurt, though it was clear that pain was her intention. “You. Are. Coming. Home. With. Me. And. We. Are. Going. To. Fuck.” She reached between his legs and forcefully squeezed his genitals. He winced at the threat of real pain. “Is that finally clear? Do you get it now?”

“Could you, uh, let go, or at least do that a little more gently? And we are? Really?“

She kept her hand ... and the pressure ... right where they were. “Unless you don’t want to. Though if you reject me, I’m going to replace this hand with my knee.”

“Wait!” Despite his semi-inebriated haze, insight finally arrived. “Is this the decision you had to make tonight?”

“Uh-huh.”

“This was the favor?”

“Two for two. It’s like watching someone graduate from kindergarten.”

His eyes widened. “That means the phone call was with...”

“ ... your very persuasive lover, yes. Congratulations, dipshit. It’s only taken you all night to figure it out.”

“But how did she know we were together?”

“She didn’t, but you’re not exactly whimsical in your habits. It was obvious you’d end up here sooner or later. She asked me to take you home and take you down, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. She also said something else which I didn’t quite understand.”

“Which was?”

“‘Tell him this is the third part.’ Do you know what she meant?” He nodded, though Wendy noticed the grimace that accompanied it. “What’s wrong?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

“Okay.” Suddenly, her bravado departed and she was overcome by the same vulnerability that he’d seen from her on several occasions ... all of them while they were either discussing or in the midst of intimate physical relations. “This is it, you know. This is us. You and me. Hot hetero-on-lesbo action, just like we’ve always talked about. Do you want to do this?”

“Do you?”

“Answer my question first, jackass.” The insult was a nervous whisper that lacked its usual fire, all her typically breezy mockery absent as she waited for an answer he knew carried a lot more weight than a simple yes or no. He noted that, while she’d relaxed her grip on his delicate genitalia, she hadn’t moved her hand away.

This is no time for our normal banter. This is important and very, very real. If we screw this up — now, while it’s going on, or in the aftermath — it could make or break our friendship. Palming her cheeks in his hands, he leaned forward and kissed her forehead, then stared into her eyes as earnestly as he could. “I do. I’m not going to lie to you, though; it’s more than a little frightening. Doing it with Kathryn involved was ... well, almost everything with her is like clinging to a runaway horse, but it also felt safe with her around. This doesn’t. This feels dangerous. Like we could get it wrong — really wrong — and we might not be able to put any of this back together. I’ll do everything I can to make sure that doesn’t happen, but I want both of us to go into it with our eyes open. Wendy...” He moved one of his hands to stroke her hair. It was still uniformly blonde, though it appeared to be a few shades lighter than the last time he’d seen her. “You’re my best friend, and I hope you always will be. I don’t want that to change. That’s so much more important to me than whether or not we have sex. But my answer is yes. If you want to — if this is something you actually want to do with me, which I still find a little baffling even though it’s incredibly exciting — then yes, I absolutely want to spend tonight with you.”

For a moment, Luke was certain that he saw tears forming in her eyes, but then she pressed forward and embraced him so tightly that he could no longer see her face. “You know, for a leaden-tongued, dull-witted, home-wrecking, grossly overpaid wine dork, you’re not completely reprehensible. I still wish you were a woman, but I can work around your deformities for a few hours. Yes, I want this. I want you. And this time I don’t want to share you. Not tonight. I don’t want this to ruin our friendship either, but despite what I said the first time we talked about this, I never really thought it would. The actual danger comes from all the other dumb shit you’re doing.”

“Sorry.”

“You’re not, though, so don’t bother apologizing to me. But Luke, here’s the thing...” She pulled away, and now her eyes were boring into his. “This is it. I’m not going to swear on a stack of Barolo that we’re never going to do this again, but ... we’re never going to do this again. Once this is over, whenever that is or wherever we are ... once we put our clothes on and walk away from each other ... we’re strictly friends from then on. No begging and pleading to get back into my pants. No bribing me with impossibly hot redheads. I don’t mind if you make a joke about it now and then, because you know I won’t be able to restrain myself, but no stroke-by-stroke trips down memory lane, either. It starts when we get to my place, but when it ends, it ends. Okay? Do you understand what I’m telling you? Because if you don’t, we can’t do this at all.”

“I’m not going to lie and say that I’m not at least a little disappointed, but of course I understand. Still, if this is my exit interview, you’re putting a lot of pressure on me to be at my very best. And, in case you’d forgotten, on yourself as well,” he added, “because if you look at it a certain way, I’ve done this particular thing a lot more often than you, whereas you’ve only done it three times, and only one of them mattered. I’m sure you’re right, though. I’ll never have the chromosomes or the equipment you really want, and...”

“Hold on, Luke. That’s not why. No, I’m never going to be anything other than one-hundred percent lesbian, aside from this inexplicable asterisk and a pair of altered-state regrets in my distant past. Based on our previous encounter, and despite all the pressure we’re most definitely putting on each other, I expect this to be really good sex ... or at least as good as it can be between me and a dude. If that’s all there was to it, I’d probably be up for an occasional roll in the heterosexual hay some night when we’re both horny and available. And before your ego starts getting involved, it’s not because I’m worried about it ‘meaning something.’ It already does. Having sex with your best friend better fucking mean something. When it’s over, I know I’m going to have some heavy feelings about it, and I hope you will too.”

“I already do, and we haven’t even started. But now I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”

“It’s because I don’t want it to mean nothing.”

“I don’t see how it could.”

“Then you’re not seeing clearly. First of all, no matter how I feel about you, this — the sex itself, I mean — is a curiosity for me. I’ve already admitted that I prefer a real dick to the zillions of artificial versions I’ve had inside me, and you’re surprisingly good at giving head, but everything else involved in having sex with a dude is only tolerable for me because I’m curious and because it’s you. Eventually, maybe even tonight, the curiosity’s going to be satisfied, and when that happens, there’s not going to be enough to get over the rest. Even if it doesn’t happen tonight — and I hope it doesn’t — it’d happen sooner rather than later. I’d rather not end up having lousy, resentful, unsatisfying sex with you just because one of us wanted to give it another shot. I want one really great memory, and then I want to leave it there.”

“That makes complete sense, and I should’ve seen it myself. I suppose the reason I didn’t is that, while I know intellectually that you’re a lesbian, to me you’re also a beautiful and desirable woman, and I’m sexually attracted to you in the same way I would be to anyone else. It’s impossible for me to conceive of sex with you ever being bad. In a physical sense, I mean. But you’re right: if you were visibly turned off, that’d be bad sex and worse for our friendship.”

“Okay, I’ll let you off the hook, but just because you’re buttering me up in a pathetically transparent attempt to get laid. The thing is, it’s not working. Not that it has to — you’ve obviously forgotten how easy I am — but because it’s coming from you. I like it because it’s something my friend’s saying to me, but it doesn’t turn me on because it’s coming from a man. See what I mean?”

“I do. But earlier, you said ‘first of all.’ That means there’s something else.”

“There is, and I don’t want you to be upset when I remind you of this, but your romantic and sexual life is really fucked up right now. If everything goes to hell, you’re going to need my friendship much more than you’re going to need my pussy, and you’re going to want my booze much more than you’re going to want my boobs. Or, if by some miracle everything works out, you two are going to be in your own universe for an indefinite period of time. Either way, my juicy bits will no longer be required.”

“But if — and you’re right, it’s a big if — things work out, Kathryn and I will be...”

“Yes, yes, I understand your lives will be one giant traveling orgy and I’d eventually be invited to join the circus. That’s why I didn’t swear on a stack of Barolo, because you know how I feel about your nymphomaniac girlfriend, and I might possibly consider an interesting enough invitation. But I don’t promise to come running with open legs, either. I’m very, very far from convinced that you two are safe to be around. I’d love to be completely uninvolved and find an unthreatening distance from the blast zone before it’s too late, but I’m obviously so deeply involved I can’t even think about walking away. After all, we’re only having this conversation right now because your lover tracked me down and essentially begged me to fuck you.”

“So this isn’t about falling under the spell of my irresistible masculine charm?”

“You’re in serious danger of making me call the whole thing off. Blech! No, it’s really not. I had no intention of getting naked with you tonight. I wasn’t thinking about it, and I wasn’t going to allow myself to think about it, until you gained some resolution and clarity in your toxic waste dump of a love life. I don’t know why she did it either, though if you do I assume I’ll drag it out of you eventually, but ... well, like I said, she was persuasive.”

“How persuasive?”

“Persuasive enough that I’m absolutely not telling you everything I know.”

“Now that’s intriguing.”

“Typical dude. Hasn’t even kissed the lady he’s about to shag and he’s already scanning the horizon, hunting for his next conquest.”

“That’s completely untrue.”

“It’s not.”

“It is. Let me prove it you.” For a few minutes, she protested and struggled as his lips pressed and worked against hers. Eventually, her mouth opened and their tongues entwined. But it didn’t last very long, and with a mighty shove she pushed him away. He was visibly tenting his dress pants. When she noticed, she looked more amused than aroused, though there was a slight flush reddening her cheeks.

“I know I’ve joked about it in the past, but I don’t want to do anything here. I’d never be able to see you sitting at my bar without also seeing the reruns. Here’s what’s going to happen: I’ll drive you and the pimpmobile to my place and tuck your lover’s car in a nice, safe garage. For which you’re paying, by the way. Once we’re in my apartment, you’ll get naked and stand in the shower while we shave all that disgusting steel wool off your face, your nuts, and anywhere else I think I might want to touch, kiss, or lick. Don’t worry; even though I’d like to, I’m not going to turn you into a hairless Olympic swimmer; I only really care about certain parts. After which we’ll decamp to my bed and have a ludicrous amount of forbidden sex, if that’s okay with you. And tomorrow — assuming you live through tonight — you’ll finally be able to say that you woke up next to a lesbian after dicking her all night. On the other hand, no one’s going to believe you if you claim something so patently absurd, and in fact if you ever attach my name to that story I’ll deny it to my dying breath. So, do we have a deal? Are you going to spend the rest of the night trying and failing to turn me straight?”